


We Share One Beating Heart

by hopeless_eccentric



Category: The Penumbra Podcast
Genre: Alternate Universe - Ghosts, Canon Non-Binary Character, Cuddling & Snuggling, Fluff, Fluff and Humor, For like a chapter, Getting Together, Humor, Hurt/Comfort, Meet-Cute, Nonbinary Juno Steel, Other, Person Stuck With A Ghost As A Roommate Juno Steel, Sickfic, Victorian Ghost Peter Nureyev, and they were ROOMMATES, but make it haunted, hes basically a ghost from the sims, major character death is literally just to make nureyev a ghost, this is basically a rom com
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-01
Updated: 2020-10-03
Packaged: 2021-03-07 17:41:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 3
Words: 7,154
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26741554
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hopeless_eccentric/pseuds/hopeless_eccentric
Summary: Juno whipped around to find the air empty, shivering with an unnatural chill. When he turned back to the mirror, the spectre who had flickered his lights and rearranged his chairs and, all in all, made life in the apartment a waking fever dream was still there.Whatever horror Juno had expected, the reality was far worse.The ghost was hot. Stupid hot.Updating daily!!
Relationships: Peter Nureyev/Juno Steel, Rita & Juno Steel
Comments: 65
Kudos: 132





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Title from Ghost Story by Charming Disaster
> 
> Content warnings for implied/referenced death, mentioned possession, struggle with reality (it's denial of ghost stuff), haunting, blood (idk how to tag "the walls bleed" but they do), nausea mention, gore mention

If Juno had to blame this all on one thing, it would be that stupid haunted locket he bought on a dare. 

A new city and a new job meant a night shift, which also meant significantly less time to spend acting like a human being instead of some kind of possum. To celebrate his last few days in the sun, Rita took him to an antique market for old time’s sake. 

All he expected was their usual pastime of finding weird old paintings, pointing to them, and saying “that’s you” to one another until either their sides hurt from laughing or the rabid pack of wicker basket-hunting old ladies chased them from the store. Juno hadn’t brought more than what was in his wallet, and he didn’t see any need to. 

However, when his eyes fell upon a rusty, heart-shaped pendant bearing a hot pink post-it note that read “VERY HAUNTED,” he knew he had to scrape together what cash he had and buy the thing immediately. 

Rita said something about how every single horror movie started, but Juno waved her off. If push came to shove, he could take a ghost in a fight. 

Juno wasn’t usually the type to get punished for his hubris, but after a few days of the necklace making his life miserable from its locked drawer in his dresser, he had a feeling that was about to change. 

Thanks to the new work schedule and its habit of dragging Juno from bed late in the afternoon and chucking him back in at some ungodly hour of the morning, that also meant he got stuck home alone with that dumb hunk of metal during all hours of the night. Juno wasn’t particularly a fan of horror movies, but he was beginning to believe Rita. If this ghost or ghoul or demon or whatever decided not to like him, he was pretty much done for. 

Juno was pretty sure whatever haunted the locket couldn’t be any worse than some of his college roommates. 

He had spent the vast majority of his life as a vehement nonbeliever. If there was an afterlife, he’d never seen it, so he didn’t have any decent reason to believe some Victorian asshole was still clinging onto a certain chunk of jewelry for whatever reason. Any strange happenings were probably just an overactive and overtired mind filling his gaps in memory with what felt, if not probable, the favorite answer of an exhausted brain. 

If a faucet turned on without reason, that was the faucet’s problem. Things could always be explained, even the odder ones. When he walked out of a shower to see the mirror fogged, save for a drawing of a cat, he just assumed the mirror hadn’t been cleaned since the last tenant was there. 

Besides, Victorian ghosts didn’t draw cats.

However, what he called a long string of coincidences and what Rita called the reason he needed to start burning sage in his apartment began to escalate. 

If, hypothetically, this were some kind of spirit, they started off with fairly typical haunting fodder. Chairs had a habit of sliding on their own, doors opened and closed, though never harshly, and once, Juno saw the television turned to some horrible soap opera when he came home from work. 

He continued with his denial, even if he didn’t care to get every vent and plug checked just to be certain. It was a stupid thing to waste his money on, and he doubted it would give him any more peace of mind than he could glean from assuring himself he had merely done and forgotten each one of these things. 

Juno felt his denial slipping when the ghost started to do the dishes. 

He was sure he hadn’t washed the frying pan that morning. There was even a still-pinging reminder on his phone. Yet when he came home from work and dragged himself into the kitchen, the frying pan sat on a towel besides the sink with a little hot pink post-it note stuck to the counter at its side. 

“VERY HAUNTED,” read the top line. 

“I thought I’d take care of this for you. Please, if you could, buy more of these adhesive papers,” read the second, which was signed with a flourished pair of syllables Juno had to squint at to make out. 

“P.N.”

“Huh,” Juno heard himself say. 

A faint chuckle lilted through the air behind him. Juno whipped around, heart hammering and hairs on end and eyes blown wide, but whatever occupant of the empty space behind his head seemed to be stubbornly invisible. 

“Come on,” Juno sighed. 

Juno didn’t know if he expected the empty air to reply or what, but an icy draft shifting past him and uncapping the ballpoint pen of its own accord was not it. He spun around to follow the draft, as if his eyes would do him any more good than his nose, which stubbornly detected only a distant waft of roses. Juno made a mental note to look that up later. He was having trouble focusing on anything else with the pen aloft and swirling across the note, guided all the while by an unseen hand. 

“If we’re going to be stuck together, at least tell me your name, darling,” appeared, scribbled in the corner of the already full note. 

Juno huffed. 

“I’ve lost it,” he conceded. “There’s no way in hell I haven’t lost it at this point.”

The pen drew a frowny face just above the message. 

“Fine,” Juno snapped, as if cutting off a real, living person with vocal cords, rather than something that had to have been a figment of his imagination. “I know you’re probably going to eat my soul or something for this, but fine. I’ll try anything once.”

The note flipped over, the pen struggling over the adhesive side for a moment until it found the standard paper once more. 

“I assure you, I would do no such thing.”

Juno rolled his eyes. 

“Okay, then, Mister Initials,” Juno huffed. “Call me Juno.”

The name instantly traced upon the paper, in varying levels of standard script and cursive until it seemed the invisible hand guiding the pen had grown accustomed to it. Juno hadn’t ever been one for cursive, but he couldn’t help but like the way his name looked in whatever hand wrote it. 

Reminding himself of his situation, Juno forced himself to blink. He stumbled backwards, as if the counter had just made some direct threat against him. 

“No goddamn way,” he said to himself, praying he was alone. “Yeah, no way. Jesus Christ, Steel.”

Out of the corner of his eye, he could have sworn he caught sight of the pen rising once more, but Juno stormed off and directly through a patch of uncharacteristically frigid air on the way to bed. He could deal with his slipping mind after he slept. 

Come time for his screeching, late-evening alarm, every message, from the niceties to the curly, scripted ‘Junos’ and ‘P.N.s’ dancing across the crowded little note, remained. Juno tried turning the note over, blinking, and even holding that little hot pink paper up to a light, but every message seemed to be as stubborn as he was. 

Even if he did accidentally become roommates with a ghost, he didn’t have to sit around and be scared about it all day. He decided to do what he did with the brunt of his problems and pretend it wasn’t happening. However, with a lighter load of work given to the crew on the graveyard shift, there wasn’t anything to throw himself into, nor was there anything with which to occupy his mind. 

Ignoring a ghost was especially hard when he was also ignoring the single request that ghost had made of him. 

He was pretty sure the easiest way to die in a horror movie was by doing what a ghost said, so even if this was something supernatural, rather than Rita using her spare key to play a prank on him, he wasn’t going to get more post-it notes. A part of him that was far too comfortable with his new roommate situation, or perhaps too shocked to consider the oddity of it all, considered if this ‘P.N.’ might repurpose the pen on a wall or somewhere slightly less friendly, but Juno pushed the thought away. 

He wasn’t going to take orders from a dead guy. Even a polite one. 

After a few days, the dishes stopped doing themselves, but Juno had a feeling that he was finally catching up to his sleep schedule. If there really were a ghost, which, he was sure now there was not, the walls would be covered in some kind of demonic scrawl, like in every horror movie Rita had ever dragged him to.

In hindsight, two blatant acts of ghost-related hubris back to back probably weren’t the best ideas in the world. However, Juno was still relatively surprised when he came home to find his walls bleeding. 

“Shit, my landlord’s gonna kill me,” Juno groaned as a viscous, sloping letter H oozed from the wall. 

“Hello, Juno,” the wall greeted. 

“Tell me that’s not real,” Juno grimaced, thankful that shock had kept his head on his shoulders for the time being. 

He stepped further into his apartment, not feeling sick until the odor, as hot and metallic and choking as the fluid itself, hit him in a wave. Juno clutched at the nearby counter in the hopes of remaining upright while his knees decided they liked being gelatine more than they liked being bone. 

As if brushed away by some invisible hand, the message smeared, then shifted. 

“It’s real,” the wall oozed in reply.

“Who’s blood even is that?” Juno choked. 

“Who’s to say?” the wall, in whatever way a wall could, shrugged. 

“That’s—that’s really fucking important, okay?” Juno blurted out, not particularly caring if his voice was an octave up or if it was far too early to be arguing with a ghost at this volume because dammit, if his landlord found a murder scene in his kitchen, he was going to have a few more problems than a self-righteous ghost could give him.

“You could always sell that locket, you know,” the wall continued to bleed, letters growing thin, as if there was only so much blood to use. Juno really didn’t want to think about that for longer than he had to. 

“I’ll get your goddamn post-it notes, just please, never again,” Juno grumbled, trying his best to hurry his way to a different room just to get that acrid stench out of his nose. “Christ, just ask next time, okay?”

“I did ask,” the ghost continued. “And I didn’t want to permanently damage your walls, darling.”

“So this was the better option?” 

“Was it overstepping to call you darling? My apologies, but I know—”

Juno gave an exasperated shake of his head as the words erased and reformed. 

“—Language has a tendency to shift over fifteen or so decades, and—”

“It’s fine,” Juno huffed. “Call me what you like, just don’t bleed all over my walls.”

“You’re right,” the wall continued. “This might be my blood.”

Juno shuddered. 

“I’m gonna go take a shower,” he called into the general air. “Nice to meet you—uh—Mister N, or whatever. Just—”

Juno broke off to take a deep breath, instantly regretting it when the smell of the mess on the wall hit his nose like a freight train. 

“I can’t believe this shit,” he muttered to himself, then turned his attention back at some vague spot nearby the wall. “Just clean up when you’re done, okay?”

Perhaps the stench of blood lifted from the room the way the heavy blanket of night lifts into dawn, or perhaps Juno merely walked far enough from the blood and splashed enough bathroom sink water onto his face to wash away what of the odor still clung to him. Perhaps he had merely recovered from whatever walking dream that must have been. 

Awake or asleep, Juno found himself in the bathroom, staring his reflection down in search of some kind of head trauma he might not have noticed, or perhaps even forgotten about. 

When his search refused to produce any particular bruises or marks that might have qualified as a concussion, Juno sighed and leaned forward, as if more water splashed into his face might do anything but make him a little colder and a little wetter. 

He squeezed his eyes shut against the water, only opening them once more when he raised his head back to the mirror. 

“Hello, Juno,” a waistcoat-clad man standing behind Juno’s reflection managed to grin before Juno could do anything more than yelp. 

Juno whipped around to find the air empty, shivering with an unnatural chill. When he turned back to the mirror, he sunk his gaze into the face of the man who had been using Juno’s wall and way too much blood as a whiteboard for the last several minutes. 

He had anticipated some level of gore off the spirit, like a head clearly dented from carriage wheels or a hatchet still protruding from the head. Juno had spent far too many minutes bracing for this hypothetical moment in fear of some grotesque, jaundiced shell of a person with a jack-o-lantern’s grin or inch-wide dark circles. 

Whatever horror Juno had expected, the reality was far worse. 

The ghost was hot. Stupid hot. 

Juno had never seen what Rita saw in period dramas, even when she pointed to examples of distinguished men in white shirts that were both unnecessarily flowy and unnecessarily wet. However, something about the dark burgundy of this particular figure’s waistcoat, or perhaps the fit of pants Juno hadn’t seen anywhere outside Victorian-set movies he had been forced through, made Juno’s heart skip a few too many beats for his comfort. 

Then there was the problem of his face. Even as he bowed forward in a gesture so overly chivalrous that Juno felt his breath catch in his throat, he still donned a dazzling, fox-like grin. Between the line of his jaw and the curve of his face and those sharp, clever eyes that met Juno’s through that pane of glass, he looked like he had been brought into the world by an artist, just for the sake of being someone’s muse. 

Juno, feeling suddenly underdressed in his slacks and button down, coughed out a nervous laugh. The ghost’s smile only broadened. Juno could only hope to keep some level of facial composure to hide the pounding of his heart and the wave of heat rushing to his cheeks. 

“So you’re—” he sputtered. “You’re my new roommate, huh?”

“I suppose you could call me that,” the ghost mused. 

“Anything else I can call you?” Juno choked out. 

“Peter Nureyev,” he beamed. “At your service.”


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Woohoo!!!! More spooky shenanigans! Happy October everybody :D
> 
> Content warnings for murder mention, discussion of death, past deadly illness, possession (of an item) mention,

With the weekend came an excuse to be awake during the day, which Juno discovered meant a distinct lack of Peter Nureyev. Whether or not that was fortunate was yet to be determined. 

On the one hand, weekends meant waking up to the dishwasher running and the laundry done, as it seemed Nureyev couldn’t get enough of any kind of modern chore that required a machine. Juno certainly didn’t mind a roommate who enjoyed such tasks, but he also remained wary, unsure of how long it would be until Nureyev got bored, or, even worse, managed to break something. 

On the other hand, Juno once woke up to the sight of a mountain of bread slices on the kitchen table, all in various stages from warmed up to smoldering. He was pretty sure one or two of the slices were mere inches from becoming bread-shaped piles of ash. When he gasped and sputtered at the sight of two more slices floating themselves into the toaster, the plug pulled itself away apologetically. 

“Nureyev,” Juno groaned. “What the hell are you doing?”

“You see, Juno,” a disembodied voice from the direction of the toaster began. “There was a little diagram at the bottom of this sundial shaped object here, and that diagram showed a piece of bread, so I only assumed bread was intended to go into this machine.”

“Nureyev,” Juno repeated. 

“Yes?”

“That’s a toaster. It makes toast. If you want toast, you put a slice of bread into it, turn that dial to about a four, and then it should pop up a few minutes later,” Juno sighed. “Do you even eat food?”

“Do forgive my confusion,” Nureyev sighed. “I’ve spent much of the last hundred or so years in someone’s attic. There weren’t too many toasters, as you called them, up there.”

“Just try not to go through a whole loaf of bread next time, alright?” Juno huffed. 

“My apologies. I’d offer you fiscal compensation, though I’m afraid my account is likely as dead as I am,” Nureyev returned. Even invisible, Juno could hear the smile on his voice. “And I meant to ask you about that bread. Does it all come sliced now?”

“Most of it,” Juno shrugged. 

“What a strange world you live in, Juno,” Nureyev marvelled. 

Juno didn’t need to see him to know there were stars in his eyes. 

As mad as he was about the toaster, it wasn’t what plagued him all through his coffee date with Rita, nor was it what left him far too sleepless for far too long. Rather, the fact that Nureyev had the nerve to burn an entire loaf of bread and make it cute was probably going to be Juno’s cause of death. 

Juno could cope with a hot ghost, so long as he never had to see him. He could cope with the knowledge that, in appearance, a ghost who seldom appeared was good looking. It wouldn’t tug at the back of his mind that, even if a hypothetically attractive ghost were doing the dishes or pulling out his chair, the ghost would be attractive while doing it. 

He couldn’t cope with cute. He couldn’t cope with the wonder in Nureyev’s voice when he considered the functions of a toaster, nor could he stand the way he had tried slice after slice of bread in an experiment on the machine, instantly fascinated with all things he could figure out on his own. 

Nureyev’s face was cute in the way a tiger’s face was cute. Juno was sure, to the right people at the right time, that label might apply.

The problem was more with the mannerisms than his appearance. Nureyev could make his appearance vanish, and for the amount of strain it seemed to require to manifest anything more than the occasional hand for a wave hello, it seemed he preferred himself near-invisible. 

He couldn’t do away with his mannerisms in the same fashion. Nureyev couldn’t help that he liked to do chores around the apartment if it meant getting to use all these new machines and electric lights he kept discovering. Juno couldn’t help the way his chest got tight and his face got hot when he thought about that for too long. 

Juno was determined to not get a crush on a ghost. As bad as horror movies with possessed lockets usually were, this felt like the premise to a far worse one. 

And yet, Nureyev whistled to himself at odd hours of night and used Juno’s pens and the requested post-it notes for a relentless amount of doodles. He had figured out the TV remote and used it exclusively to watch daytime television, and once or twice, he even tried to possess Juno’s alarm when it didn’t go off at the right time. 

Nureyev signed his notes and doodled in the mist on the bathroom mirror. He peppered every note with pet names that made Juno’s stomach flip and he littered well wishes over the fridge, enamored that he might be able to send a letter so quickly. He screamed once when he saw Juno make a phone call, and when dinner came out of the microwave a little too hot, he stood near it until his own supernatural chill ate away at what would have otherwise burned Juno’s tongue. 

Okay, so maybe Juno had a crush on a ghost. But at least, he was sure that Nureyev was the kind of ghost anybody would fall for. 

When Juno finally came to terms with that fact and reached some stage of acceptance with the whole situation, he discovered he much preferred those weeks during which he worked the night shift. Even if it meant awful hours and a half-awake haze the entire time, Nureyev found it much more difficult to make his presence known during the day. Even if Juno didn’t want to admit why, his apartment felt far more empty without the distant sounds of supernatural footsteps. 

When a quick internet search recommended a certain app to communicate with the dead, Juno decided to put aside his pride and download the thing if it meant helping Nureyev feel a little less excluded during the daytime hours. 

As such, Juno ended up sitting cross-legged across his shoddily made bed, elbows on his knees and phone in his hand as he hurried through the tutorial and waited for the screen to load. The so-called radar function on the app suggested a ghost was nearby. Juno was pretty sure that was a given. 

The other functions of the app didn’t seem to work as much in his favor, for they suggested a variety of somewhat morbid questions, ranging from cause of death to revenge, rather than anything that might make a friendly conversation starter. 

Juno almost laughed aloud at his own indignance. Perhaps, ghosts didn’t want to talk about their deaths immediately after meeting someone.

He could have qualms over how disrespectful the app was later. For the time being, he sighed, selected the cause of death option, then rolled his eyes when the word ‘murder’ shimmied across the screen like an inchworm. 

“Yeah, right,” Juno snorted. 

He hit the button again, but only found the same bowling alley graphics appearing in response. 

“Nureyev,” Juno called. 

“Coming, darling,” came the faint, daytime reply Juno had become accustomed to when his work schedule wasn’t being a nightmare. 

The door swung open cautiously, as if a head were poking through the gap to ensure Juno truly meant to invite him in. When Juno nodded him over, Nureyev announced his presence through a series of padding steps across the hardwood floor and the creaking of an empty indent in the mattress at Juno’s side. 

Juno spent far too long counting just how few inches sat between his knee and that indent in the bed. He shifted to show Nureyev the screen, unable to help a gasp when he felt his elbow pass through a freezing cold patch of air. 

“Sorry,” he grimaced, returning his elbow back to his lap. 

“It’s quite nice, actually,” Nureyev admitted, voice still a shadow of its regular self. “I haven’t had body heat in a while, you know. I hate to leech off of yours, though.”

Juno hoped that in whatever set of abilities being a spectre had given Nureyev, the ability to see Juno’s pulse jump was not among that number. Nureyev saved him from pondering that for too long when he continued speaking. 

“Why does your phone say ‘murder’ on it?” Nureyev asked. 

“This app—er, well, thing—on my phone says it can talk to ghosts,” Juno started. “I didn’t know if it would help you communicate during the day or something like that, because I know talking is hard, and I think manipulating objects all the time isn’t—”

Juno felt his shoulder go cold as Nureyev, assumedly, leaned closer to the screen. 

“So the first question you go for is asking me about my death?”

“Look,” Juno protested. “I didn’t pick the questions they have on here. I just hit it and it said murder, so I was gonna ask you if that was right or not. To see if it actually worked.”

Nureyev burst out with a hearty laugh, inappropriately lively for their conversation, and in more ways than one. Nonetheless, Juno couldn’t help the way his heart clenched at the sound, only able to imagine the way a smile split Nureyev’s face in two. Perhaps he squeezed his eyes shut when he laughed. Perhaps he clutched his chest, or even bent double when lost in a fit like that. Juno wished he could get a decent look. 

“I wasn’t murdered, if that’s what you’re asking,” Nureyev recovered himself enough to say. “Consumption, darling.”

“I’m—” Juno started, his brow furrowed as he tried to think of how to hell to respond to that. No conversation in his life up to this point had ever prepared him for this one. “Sorry?”

“It was quite horrible, I’ll admit,” Nureyev sighed. “But at least it was in style, my dear.”

“That’s uh—” Juno cleared his throat. “That’s not good.”

“It wasn’t,” Nureyev agreed with a chuckle. “So I’m afraid to say your little box hasn’t worked, not least because I just now became aware of it.”

“Shit,” Juno murmured. “Worth a try, I guess.”

“Just so,” he thought he heard Nureyev smile. “It means the world that you’re trying to communicate with me anyway. I know it’s rather difficult, and frankly, if I were in your shoes, I’d be terrified.”

“It’s not an issue,” Juno returned quickly enough that he found himself jumping off a conversational cliff if it meant dodging Nureyev’s sincerity. 

Nureyev, it seemed, would not be moved. 

“I mean it, Juno,” he pressed. Juno felt a cold hand cover his own. “I appreciate your efforts to make this very normal for the both of us. The instructions on all your machines have been very helpful.”

Juno swallowed, reaching blindly at that hand until he felt unseen fingers slot between his own. He shivered at first, but after a brief squeeze or two, found the temperature far less unpleasant than the initial shocks of cold he felt when accidentally walking through his new roommate. After a moment or two longer, Juno shut his eyes, and without that barrier of sight in the way, felt he might be holding the hand of any other person in the world. 

His other hand came to rest atop their intertwined fingers, feelling where Nureyev’s lay against his skin and accustoming himself to the touch. Peter’s fingers were long and delicate, the kind that would likely look nice with just about any configuration of nail polish. After a moment too long of learning his touch by hand, Juno heard a chuckle. 

When he opened his eyes to look up, just out of pure instinct, he found Peter Nureyev smiling back at him. 

“You’re not gonna hurt yourself doing that, are you?” Juno protested. 

“I’ll manage, my dear,” Nureyev returned lightly. “I’m more worried about other things at the moment.”

“Like?”

“You see, Juno,” he began, face falling from its smile and shifting into something far more focused, but equally as lovely. His eyebrows knit together when he seemed to be thinking something over, and when truly lost in a thought, he seized his bottom lip between his impossibly sharp teeth. “I don’t know exactly how to phrase this, but for some time in my life, I did have a housemate who was a man.”

“If I had a problem with that, I don’t think we’d be having this conversation,” Juno snorted. 

“No, not quite,” Nureyev tried again and failed, frustration marching its way across his forehead. Juno wanted nothing more than to press his lips upon the spot. “I was wondering if you, might, perhaps, also be the kind of individual who would consider having a man as a housemate.”

“I do,” Juno returned, finding his own brow just as knit. 

Nureyev shook his head, gesturing uselessly with his hands. 

“The kind of housemate you kiss,” he elaborated. 

“Oh,” Juno laughed as if it had been punched out of him. “You mean like a boyfriend?”

“I’m not entirely aware of modern terminology,” Nureyev grimaced. 

For someone with such poise on every other occasion Juno had seen him, he crumpled instantly when Juno met his gaze. A blush sat high in his cheeks, accompanying his sheepish grin and the hand on the back of his neck. 

“So what are you asking me?” Juno pressed, trying to pretend his heart wasn’t doing a gymnastics routine in his chest. 

“God, I used to be so good at things like this,” Nureyev sighed, shaking his head. “My dear, I’m unsure how aware you were that I’ve been attempting to propose this question for quite some time, through my words, if not through my actions, and I was merely wondering if you might want to be my housemate.”

“I am.”

“The other kind.”

“Can you actually kiss people?” Juno heard himself say with a nervous laugh. 

“I was hoping to find out,” Nureyev admitted. “Was that a yes, then?”

Juno was struck first by how solid Peter’s lapel felt under his hand, and second, how normal it felt to be kissing him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> FINALLY!!!
> 
> Thank you all so much for reading!! Make sure to SMASH that kudos button and leave a comment down below or I'll sing spooky scary skeletons at you for an uncomfortable amount of time
> 
> Find me on tumblr @hopeless-eccentric or on twitter @withane22 !!


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Woohoo!!! Hope you guys are ready for MORE FLUFF!!
> 
> Content warnings for fever, illness, death mention, deadly illness mention

The worst part of having a ghost for a boyfriend wasn’t the feeling of purposefully cold hands up his shirt when he was trying to cook, nor was it having to constantly match his outfits to an antique locket just to take him out on an evening date. It wasn’t even the fact that Nureyev had to purposefully turn solid and just about freeze his lips off whenever he wanted physical affection. 

All of that made him jokingly miffed at worst, and genuinely amused most of the time. What he truly disliked was just how hard it was to get a decent photo of someone who happened to be incredibly photogenic, save for when a camera was ever produced. 

Most of their photos together were of one very solid person and one very blurred light. Occasionally, he caught a vague shape of a person, but only once or twice did Nureyev look anything less than one of the better photos from a low-budget ghost hunting show. The few photos that did come out well were the two Juno found himself pulling up the most often, just to brag or show Rita when she asked to see “that older man he was dating” again.

Peter didn’t mind, perhaps because the only known photo of him was of a stern-faced, if not rosy cheeked young man held in one half of a half-empty locket. He wore a different tailored suit that he looked all but stuffed into. Juno could only assume it was his stiff-collared Sunday best. While Nureyev insisted he looked horrible, Juno took it as just another reason to keep that locket on his person as often as possible. 

Usually, he took the locket off for weekdays that required he be at work. However, when he woke to a less friendly shiver and the locket stuck to his sweat-slick chest, he decided to break tradition, keep the locket on, and call in sick. 

Even with exhaustion clinging to him, he couldn’t seem to give in to sleep just yet, so with an extra fleece blanket wrapped around his shoulders, he all but dragged himself to the kitchen for a cup of tea. In his fever-addled state, however, he forgot the bag, merely pouring a cup of hot water and collapsing back onto the bed before he could even think to drink it. 

It was some ungodlier hour of night when Juno awoke again, though this time, it was to a frigid hand rubbing gentle circles into his scalp. 

“Nureyev?” Juno slurred out as a single syllable. 

Nureyev, solid with both the hour of the evening and a distinct, yet unknown purpose that carved itself into his worried brow, managed a withered smile from above. 

“Hello, Juno,” he all but whispered. 

Juno was too tired to wonder why Nureyev was going to all the trouble of a more corporeal form, but he wasn’t too tired to take advantage of it. He reached his hand blindly into the dark, and even though he shivered upon the initial touch, squeezed Peter’s free hand. Nureyev squeezed back and fixed him with a mournful, tight-lipped smile.

It didn’t last long, however, for he soon repurposed his lips upon Juno’s brow. When he rose, it was with his face knotted in concern and his hand trailing over his partner’s forehead. 

Juno hadn’t realized just how false that bone-deep chill truly was until he felt his skin burning against that icy touch. Juno was frankly shocked Nureyev didn’t draw his fingers away as if seared. Instead, he merely shifted his hand around, stroking at Juno’s forehead with a bittersweet expression. 

“What’s going on in that head of yours?”

He tried to smile supportively, though Nureyev returned the look with no more than a twitch of his mouth, as if greeting a long lost friend at a funeral. 

“How are you feeling?” Nureyev asked stiffly.

“Bad,” Juno grumbled. 

Nureyev rolled his eyes. 

“More specific, love,” Nureyev insisted. “You’re not ill, are you?” 

“Feeling pretty ‘ill’ to me,” Juno snorted.

“And has anyone at work caught anything in particular?“ Nureyev pressed onwards, bottom lip caught between his teeth. 

“I’d bet it was that asshole Rob from accounting,” Juno groaned. “He never takes a break, and I could’ve sworn he had the flu or something last week.” 

“The flu?” 

Nureyev’s hand froze where it had been playing with Juno’s hair mere moments before. 

“Uh…” Juno trailed off, trying to think of how to correct himself with his mind still dragging both the weights of sleep and fever. “Influenza?” 

“I know what it is,” Nureyev returned quickly. 

Even if his hand returned to its former motions, they were now stilted, as if strung along by a marionette’s strings, rather than the casual dance of muscle and sinew. His no longer chilly grasp on Juno’s hand was all but a vice grip, even if his face fought to bury any kind of emotion that wasn’t pleasant or neutral. 

“Nureyev,” Juno sighed, trying and failing to meet Peter’s eye when he looked up to find them squeezed shut. “What’s going on?” 

“Have you had this caliber of ailment before?” Nureyev insisted. 

“Not since I was a kid,” Juno grimaced as he tried to sit up and rest his head back against the headboard. “I think my immune system just hates my sleep schedule right now.”

Nureyev’s hand guided him all the way up, as if he might faint somewhere in those twelve inches of movement. As cold as Juno felt already, his fingertips running up and down his rib cage like a fireman down a ladder were particularly comforting. 

“I’m not gonna break,” Juno chuckled, though Nureyev fixed him with a warning look. 

“You can’t ever be too careful,” he sighed. “I made you tea, if you want it. I didn’t even burn anything.”

Peter’s hands departed his sides as if every inch between them were a mile, though they spent no haste in returning with a cold mug of steaming tea. Juno wondered vaguely if Nureyev had held onto it for some degree of warmth, remembering the way he gravitated towards heat like a cat stretching out in a sunspot. He couldn’t help a dazed smile at the thought, and almost minded taking the cup for himself. 

“You didn’t have too much trouble with the stove, did you?”

Nureyev’s smile seemed so forced that Juno felt his own melt away. His hands had stayed on Juno’s, only dragged away to ensure his drink didn’t spill. They returned to Juno’s side with all the ache of sailors returning to their home ports after years away.

“Nureyev,” Juno started once more. “I need you to communicate with me here.”

“You’re worried about if I had trouble with the stove,” Nureyev breathed with a disbelieving shake of his head. “You’re this ill, and you’re worried if I had trouble with the stove.”

“Aren’t I allowed to worry about you?” Juno snorted. “You can’t just be upset about that, honey.”

“Honey,” Nureyev choked. 

“If it’s too much, I can—”

Peter waved him off. 

“I’ve been calling you ‘dear’ since I met you,” he returned. “I don’t see any reason to start limiting your pet names now, of all times.”

“I’m not gonna—”

Nureyev’s deep, shuddering breath broke him off. Juno wasn’t sure he could even focus to make words anymore with Peter grasping his hand like a lifeline. For both of their sakes, Juno set the mug aside. When their hands rejoined, Nureyev clung to him with all the strength of the chill that gripped his bones. 

“Juno, my darling,” Nureyev breathed. “If you need me to procure medication of some sort for you, I’ll figure out a way to take the locket and retrieve a doctor.”

“What do you mean?”

“If you need leeches, I’ll get you leeches,” Nureyev pressed forward.

“We don’t use leeches anymore,” Juno mumbled dazedly. “What?”

“My love,” Nureyev continued on, his voice trembling as if the cold that ached from him also seized him from within. “I want you to know that whatever the outcome, I don’t want you to feel like you must stay behind for my sake. If you move on, I’ll do what I can do to go with you but—please, Juno. Please don’t go where I cannot follow.”

“What?” Juno choked out.

“God, and to think I’ve barely had this time with you,” Nureyev sighed, though his words shook like a prisoner slamming their hands around unyielding cell bars. “I’m so sorry, darling. Please tell me if there’s anything I can do to make this more comfortable for you. There’s no need to be scared—if you are scared, that is. It doesn’t hurt, and I’ll be here with you the entire time.”

Juno raised an eyebrow. 

“Nureyev, I’m not dying.”

Peter sputtered, his form flickering in shocked tandem. 

“But—your illness,” he protested. “Aren’t you at least worried, my dear?”

“No,” Juno replied slowly. “I’ll take a tylenol or two to bring the fever down. It won’t be fun, but I think I’ll be back to work before the end of the week.”

“What?”

Remembering that however corporeal his boyfriend looked, viruses didn’t impact the dead, Juno gingerly set Peter’s hands aside and wrapped him in a rib-cracking embrace, or at least as rib-cracking as his aching bones would allow him. 

“I’m okay,” he murmured. Juno didn’t think Nureyev needed air, but he let out a shuddering sigh nonetheless. 

Nureyev didn’t feel nearly as cold as usual, which Juno was particularly thankful for. He buried his head in Juno’s shoulder and rested his arms around Juno’s waist and just sat there, sinking into him like a leaf taking on water and slowly drifting down into the open arms of the sea. Even despite his state, Nureyev’s chest still rose and fell, as if two lungs were seizing and a heart were pounding within his chest. Juno felt no pulse, but found he didn’t need to. The whispered murmurs that might have been his name were enough. 

“I was so scared, love,” Nureyev raised his head to murmur. “I was terrified when it happened to me. I didn’t want you to have to endure the same.”

“I know,” Juno whispered. “I get it.” 

Nureyev merely nodded into his shoulder, clinging to Juno as if he were the one thing shielding him from a cruel, uncaring world. When Juno felt himself growing sore in the position, he decided it was best not to break such an embrace. Instead, he slipped back under the covers, pulling Peter with him. 

Peter scrambled to ensure his arms didn’t trail far from their former spots, even as he had to maneuver both an arm around Juno’s waist and one to reach for his face. He kept a thumb there, stroking over a patch of skin with the kind of reverent worship that made Juno’s heart pound, even in his otherwise bleary state. 

“Juno,” he murmured, mostly just to himself. “My love.”

Juno smiled. 

“I’m glad I’m not dying,” Juno snorted, though the laugh fell away when Nureyev only pulled him closer. 

“I’m sorry if I tried too hard to keep you awake,” Nureyev murmured. “I didn’t want you to be alone, just in case.” 

“I know,” Juno sighed. “Thank God for modern medicine.” 

They laid in comfortable silence for some time, Nureyev breaking only to murmur sweet nothings into the crown of Juno’s head and fix his hair where it had gone flat. Those usually frigid hands were pleasantly warm against Juno’s chill, as if Nureyev’s usually frigid state and Juno’s overheating one had found some kind of pleasant equilibrium. 

Juno was too tired to think about it for long, so he merely snuggled closer to Nureyev’s chest, the locket pressed between them. 

“I love you,” Nureyev murmured into the top of his head. 

“Me too,” Juno mumbled against Nureyev’s shirt, unsure of how or when his waistcoat had been done away with, but not particularly caring. “I love you too, I mean.” 

“I’ll tell you again when you can process it better, then,” Nureyev smiled. 

“You’re warm,” Juno all but yawned back into his shirt. “You’re never warm.” 

Peter blinked, then bent his head forward to lay it against his arm, rather than committing the unforgivable sin of parting Juno from half of his embrace. When he felt his own temperature, his mouth fell open. 

“So I am,” he agreed. “It seems you’ve been a good influence on me, Juno.” 

“Just get back here,” Juno groaned, pulling Nureyev tighter. “I’m cold.”

Juno held Peter close, as much to help his fever as to remind him that somewhere, behind a few too many blankets and two layered sweatshirts, his heart still, resiliently, beat. Even if sleep began to tug at him, he knew well Nureyev would still be there when he awoke once more. If he was corporeal, he’d smile and kiss Juno’s forehead under the guise of checking his temperature. If not, Juno would still feel the lingering of those arms around him and the chest against his head and the ghost of a touch over his cheekbone. He’d feel lips on his forehead and know exactly who owned them, not particularly caring if Nureyev showed himself or not. 

For the time being, Juno pressed them close enough that their legs tangled and their arms tangled and Juno had a feeling Nureyev would need to utilize his ability to go through things just to exit their comfortable knot of limbs and blankets. 

Just before sleep could claim him as its own, Juno felt Nureyev shift, leaving him one last breeze-light kiss across his lips before exhaustion and his lover’s arms held him in tandem.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WOOHOO!!! FLUFF!! Happy Halloween!
> 
> Thank you all so much for reading!! Make sure to SMASH that kudos button and leave a comment below or I'll gently haunt you or something idk
> 
> Check me out on tumblr @hopeless-eccentric or on twitter @withane22 !!

**Author's Note:**

> so that was a Time
> 
> Thank you so much for reading!! Make sure to SMASH that kudos button and leave a comment down below or I'll haunt you in kind ways like doing your dishes
> 
> Find me on tumblr @hopeless-eccentric or on twitter @withane22 !!


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